Question about hours for home health nurse

[Callie312]

Hi,

I am new to this board and really need some help. I am physically disabled and require home health care nursing to live in my own home. I have had in home nursing for the past 13 years and been through my share of bad nurses and experiences. There have also been some good experiences. For the past 5 years I've had the same nurse every single day. I only require three hours of service a day, so her hours of work are 2 hours on, 13 hours off, 1 hour on, 8 hours off, and so on. The agency that she works for has not had anyone else to care for me so she's been my only nurse for the past 5 years. This past week I had outpatient surgery so my current nurse had her mother hired on as the mother is a RN and could care for me if I needed IV antibiotics. Both my current nurse and her mother wanted the mother to only be on my care for the IV antibiotics and that was all. Since the mother was hired on, my nursing agency has all of a sudden told me that my current nurse's hours are highly illegal and that the mother has to take over one complete day of my care per week. I've never been told this before and my wound doctor tells me every week how lucky I am to have this nurse and how having only one nurse is best for my quality of care. This nurse and I work together great and my health has improved greatly in the 5 years since I've had only the one nurse. Are her hours illegal and if so what recourse do I have to continue the quality of care I deserve and require? Thank you.

[MrChicagoRN, RN]

Illinois law does require that an employee be offered one day of rest after 6 consecutive days of work.

Can anyone else (family etc) be trained to take over one day per week?